Blizzard's Warcraft Booty

CNN's Game Over column tackles the big daddy of MMOGs this week, with a column on World of Warcraft's financial success. From the article: "By 11pm on Nov. 22, there were over 4,000 gamers queued up to be among the first to get a copy of 'WoW' (as it has become known). The problem was: there were only 2,500 copies of the game in the store, and no one had thought to hire security for the event. By raiding other nearby locations, the retailer was able to meet demand. And the Blizzard crew knew they had a hit on their hands, one unlike anything they had created before."

Comments

Here's a lesson I wish more would take to heart...

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

When Blizzard published "Warcraft 3" in mid-2003, it made the conscious decision to chase the Chinese market. China has a very active gaming population, but software piracy runs rampant in the country. Legitimate copies of games sell for what works out to $15 in U.S. dollars. Pirated copies are $1 U.S.

Blizzard, despite the increased piracy it was sure to face, released the game in the country, but opted to drop its retail price to within an "arm's reach" of the pirate price.

"The idea was let's create a real market of authentic players and see if we can change the mindset," said Sams. "Let's see if we can change the mindset by showing we're willing to meet them partway."

The gamble worked. While there were still millions of pirated copies available, Blizzard sold 1 million authorized copies.

Perhaps other software companies should try to meet the users partway...

Microsoft, I'm looking at you.

You too, Adobe.

Not unlike...

[KDan]

Blizzard have had a fair number of hits, excellent games which were very well made and sold many copies. Warcraft 2 was a major hit. Diablo 2 is *still* selling copies. Stacraft - don't get me started. Warcraft 3 itself is hardly a failure. I'd say they're pretty used to publishing successful games. I doubt that WoW's success came as a shock to them.

Daniel